Are You Still In Bed? Pt. 2

How much of our lives are spent Doing things we wish we didn’t have to: work (usually any occupation that isn’t your dream job) with all the traffic/commuter problems that accompany it; civilian obligations (such as jury duty, tax preparation or filing); or being stuck in bureaucratic gridlock (waiting at the DMV, a US Post Office, making a court appearance, fighting a parking ticket, navigating municipal homepages, filling out hundreds of sheets of paperwork for on- and offline applications, resumes, educational grants, loans; or for various registrations, licenses, permits, allowances, refunds, etc.) …versus how much time do we spend merely Anticipating doing any of the aforementioned things?

The purpose of this article is to explain why (besides in examples like the combined time of a full time job plus the average commute to and from), we award more time, space, and energy in our minds to (an obsession with or avoidance of) unwelcome tasks, and the anxiety or procrastinations they cause in our daily lives, than the time, space, and energy which those same tasks would take up in procedural minutes. The article aims to establish the cause of this discrepancy; – often contemptuously associated with or referred to these days as, “adulting” – identify some of the avenues people go down in order to correct or address their life issues; question the efficacy of those proposed solutions; and then reframe the solution onhand the fore-established cause. These topics will be explored so as to elucidate the concepts and principles of Unism, and to share what information we have come across in our studies.

If you’re anything like us, you know that this anticipation, better described as a sense of dread or anxiety which can drive one into procrastinations, isolationist tendencies, and/or feelings of shame, fear, and depression, is very often disproportionate to the time spent actually completing the anticipated task. For example, filing my income taxes this year, I myself spent more combined time from January to April constantly reminding myself to file, worrying I would miss the filing date, contemplating if I should request an extension on the deadline, hypothetically debating the merits of itemized over standard deductions, and fearing my inevitable Kafkaesqueloss of sanity at the hands of a faceless bureaucracy than I did actually filing my taxes, which took all of about 15 minutes.

What’s up with this? Am I, and those like me, unfit to apply or uphold ourselves to the basic requirements of modern civil society? Are procrastinators just lazy, undisciplined whiners who just need to stop thinking and start doing? Is adulting an epidemic? Is moderate, or even severe anxiety just a completely unregulated, perpetually-unchecked yet otherwise manageable and self-indulged emotional state, validated by the medical community and ourselves, to such an extent that we allow it to rule or destroy our lives? If we are answering these questions from the perspective of the old world: Yes, Yes, Yes, and Yes. And there is, in fact, merit to those perhaps painful answers. Yet in constructing the formation of a new, wholly inclusive, fundamentally equal world, we have found that there is another source for these problems, and thus another perspective from which we may understand how these problems arise, and how they can be dealt with. Though let us remember that, while Unism rejects both taking on a victim-identity and projecting victimization on others (both of which are increasingly popular trappings of ineffectual and frankly detrimental modern day Liberal pandering), there is clearly much value in taking an honest appraisal of ourselves and the systems we find ourselves in, assessing the root causes of our troubles, and establishing the solutions thereto. In exploring this subject, while it is not our intention to assign or shift blame to ourselves or onto other persons or external principles, we will not shy away from identifying the primary causes of these issues, regardless of their origin(s). So, while we mustn’t shirk away from self-improvement and honest self-appraisal, there is in fact an exterior explanation for these troubles.

As Unists, we have determined that most people, many of ourselves included, who struggle with this seemingly inescapable tendency towards procrastination or anxiety – while not flawed in any true or meaningful human sense – are the unfortunate recipients, whether by nature or by nurture, of poor socialization. Merriam Webster’s defines socialization as, “the process by which a human being beginning at infancy acquires the habits, beliefs, and accumulated knowledge of society through education and training for adult status.” While in appearance many, if not perhaps the majority of people around us have seemingly been successfully socialized to our modern, Western, globalized and capitalist society – evidenced by the extent to which they have no issue selling their life to a company or business that does not value them personally at all (gauged by their replaceability), in order to make enough money (or credit) to afford the things they think will make them happy, so that they can finally relax and retire (if they are lucky), with the best years of their lives behind them – We are finding that more and more people are waking up to the realization that the demands of our modern, industrial (or “post-industrial service-driven”) societies are completely incompatible with, inadequate for, and terribly inept at developing, fostering, or in many respects even allowing a sense of personal purpose or inherent value for any, much less each, of its individual members… whether expressed in our friends’ petulant rants on “adulting,” through sincere debilitating depression felt for one’s current place in life, or bottled up completely until a mid-life or mid-mid-life crisis, these realizations and the emotional ammunition unloaded with them can be devastating if not directed at the right facets of one’s life.

This understandably makes it pretty hard to get out of bed. Without a purpose, or even a sense of a perceived purpose for ones self as an individual, nor for society as a whole, one begins to slowly unravel at the soul. You might begin to question the necessity or value of all things which do not serve the determination of ones purpose. You might stay awake at night – all night – begging the infinite cosmos to shed some far off light, even just a random, stray ray of it, onto the true intendment or objective of our daily, collective meanderings on this ever-twirling rock.

You you might turn to ethnic or nationalist folk roots and traditions, or turn or return to areligion, or to crystal healing and esoteric chakra alignments in order to fill this inner longing for a sense of truth, of legitimacy, of some message from someone, somewhere, saying that You have a value and legitimacy singularly, but also as a part of a larger whole – that you are protected and strengthened alongside your brethren; either your countrymen, your coreligionists, or your fellow homeopathologists and past-life-regressionists.

We sincerely hope that you can find true inner peace and fulfillment along these avenues. Yet, in that even persons with such spiritual, historical, or moderately transcendent world-views or moorings often still find themselves questioning the ultimate gravity and scope of what humanity could or should achieve in this life, we offer Unism as a much more powerful, unifying, and superseding alternative to your own nationalist identity, as an addendum to your own religion, as a shortcut along your search for a new religion, and as a culmination of and simplification of your new age enlightenment.

We have come to realize that, despite what political, economic, national, religious, or spiritual identity you may (or, more often, sadly may not) find comfort in, the overwhelming deficit that our current world (meaning our communities, societies, and the ideologies they embody) possesses for discovering, empowering, and pursuing an individual purpose and thereby any meaningful personal or collective gratification, makes these multiplicitous identities and affiliations we rely on so proudly for our identities and perspectives wholly unsatisfactory.

As Unists, we are shedding these identities as we see fit, in favor of a new union, without the baggage of the past, and intended to bring about the future of a united world. By all means, keep those identities and identifiers which do in fact serve you; those which do not disconnect you from your fellow man for the price of connecting you to a select few (this revokes both the Republican and Democrats political parties straight away). Unism is not incompatible with any group which holds to the Golden Rule, so long as it does not assert the superiority of its adherents over those it does not include. (Does this apply to your religion, or to your conception thereof?)

But Unism is more than just a feel-good umbrella group for all well-meaning collectives – Unism is a path which puts you in the driver’s seat of your own destiny and purpose, as daunting as that may seem, so long as you are not at odds with the well-being and prosperity of yourself and those around you. So long as that is satisfied, it is your ultimate choice. It could not be any other way in this truly free world we are building – no worthwhile purpose can be foisted upon you, no matter how much we may long for such a bestowal, such an assignment would self-defeat its own intention and would enslave you to a hierarchy of those who would bestow such purpose. And this well-being is not constrained by the limiting definition of freedom we widely accept in our modern world, but is informed by a true universal sense of well-being and freedom, which takes into account things that modern consumerism and industrialization have neglected to safeguard, usually at the behest of societally or environmentally damaging self-interest; instead of worthwhile and measured self-sacrifice for the sake of the community and its environment.

If you find yourself still “in bed” with your fears and anxieties, afraid to tackle the day, afraid to truly be who you were meant to be, afraid of the slow progression towards a lifetime of unfulfilling, unchallenging, and unrewarding milestone after milestone, and afraid to recognize the true value and potential of your dynamic and limitless life, that’s ok – it’s not your fault that you have been perhaps poorly socialized and are therefore overwhelmed by the extremely pedantic and ungratifying motions of modern existence. But it is now your responsibility to get up.

So let’s get up.

We’ve set the alarm. And we’ll be awaiting you, at the start of a new day, a day which will usher in the dawning of a new world, wholly unified: unconstrained by racial, ethnic, ability, or gender-based societal or interpersonal divisions, and united by a sense of shared humanity, which can harness the potential of our hitherto “huddled masses, yearning to be free.”

But enough yearning. I think I hear the alarm – It’s time to set ourselves free.